A question I get asked a lot is “How do I become a virtual assistant?” Becoming a virtual assistant is a great work-from-home opportunity for many particularly with the low start up costs and the fact that you can start by charging others for skills that you already possess. In today's video, I will take you through the steps to getting yourself set up. We go into how it's important to align your existing skills with the services you offer, what you can do to start marketing yourself, the value of conversations and much more.

Full transcript:

Hey everybody! Laura from Better Biz Academy here to talk about how to become a virtual VA. Now a VA just stands for virtual assistant. It's like an administrative or executive assistant who does all of the work remotely, online, and on your own schedule and time.

Many people are interested in becoming a virtual assistant but are hesitant because it sounds like it's too good to be true. Now, I've been a virtual assistant since 2012 and I couldn't believe the first time somebody hired me to do a project either. Somebody hired me to literally print some envelopes and drive those envelopes to post office for his real estate company. I was using mail merge to create letters to construction companies about real estate opportunities and he'd already paid for the stamps and the ink and the paper and everything. And I thought, "Well, this is weird. I can't believe somebody is paying me for this." However, it really is legitimate and there are a lot of people online who need help building their business and will turn to virtual assistants to assist them with that process.

So, how do you become a virtual VA?

Identify the skills you already have

First of all, think about the skills you already have that can translate over to a virtual environment. Data entry, research, calendar management, email management, event planning, all of those things are types of tasks that could be handled by a VA.

However, you might do something more specialized like helping somebody run their podcast or their YouTube channel, for example, or managing all of their social media outlets and creating all of the graphics and materials that go along with that. So, you will find virtual assistants across the board who do all different types of tasks and some choose to specialize in a particular piece of software or a particular type of project, but it really begins with you deciding what do you like.

That's the coolest thing about starting your own business. What do you like doing? You may not know the answer to that yet so it's going to take some practice to figure out what you enjoy doing and maybe what you're not so crazy about. But that's really the first step to become a virtual assistant.

Develop a marketing plan You can commit to

The next thing you need to do is come up with a marketing plan. This might be interacting in Facebook groups, responding to jobs on Upwork, contacting people directly, writing articles about how you can help people on LinkedIn and connecting with people there.

There's so many different ways to market your virtual assistant business but coming up with a plan and one that you could stick to is important. I encourage you to find one or two outlets where you're going to focus your virtual assistant marketing efforts because if you spread yourself out too thin, you're not going to stick with it and you're going to give up too soon and not see any results.

Be clear about your unique value proposition

Landing your first virtual assistant client can take some time. It's going to take a while to continuously pitch people. You've got to be prepared to talk about what makes you different from other virtual assistants out there. Is it amazing turnaround time? Is it the fact that you've been in the administrative field for years? Is it that you offer amazing communication and have a specialty skills for a particular type of software or thing? Whatever that is, it is your unique value proposition. You need to be aware of that when launching your virtual assistant business because you will increase your chances of converting someone into a paying client tremendously, just following that tip alone. So, I really recommend that it's something that you consider as you're putting together your business building blocks as a virtual assistant.

Start Pitching Your Services

The next thing you need to do to become a virtual VA is simply just start calling yourself a VA. Put yourself out there, stick to the marketing plan that you've created, start finding clients, find ways to interact with people who maybe interested in your services. Whatever your marketing plan is, pick something that you can be consistent with. Are you going to blog once a week? Are you going to do a Facebook live once a week in a group where people like your ideal clients are hanging out? What are you going to do to pitch your services to these people? And then begin having conversations. Conversations over email but especially over the phone or Skype can be really valuable because they help tell you what your current clients or future clients really need. And you can tailor your services based on that. It's really that simple to become a virtual assistant.

Take existing skills that you already have from your past volunteer or employment experience, translate it into an online atmosphere, select a marketing method you can stick to and then start having conversations or pitching people. If you stick to this and are consistent with how you reach out to people and market yourself and your business, you will see results. Soon enough you'll be nearly fully booked with virtual assistant clients and be interested in scaling your business to the next level.

To learn more about becoming a virtual assistant, check out some of the other videos in this channel [Laura Pennington - Freelance Freedom]. We have a virtual assistant playlist. I've also got some great podcast episodes where I interview very successful VAs about how they got there.